Vielmetter Los Angeles proudly congratulates Stanya Kahn for being named as one of the Anonymous Was A Woman 2023 award recipients!

Anonymous Was A Woman is a celebrated nomination-only grant that has awarded women artists since 1965 for their “accomplishments, artistic growth, originality, and potential.” Stanya Khan is one of 15 artists to receive the $25,000 prize this year.

ARTnews wrote “The list of nearly 300 past recipients is a who’s who of today’s leading artists, many of whom received the award at critical points in their careers. Among them are Carrie Mae Weems (2007), Cecilia Vicuña (1999), Mickalene Thomas (2013), Joan Semmel (2007), Betye Saar (2004), Senga Nengudi (2005), Lynn Hershman Leeson (2014), and the late Laura Aguilar (2000).

“For any artist who’s out there applying for anything, don’t give up—keep trying,” Dindga McCannon said. “Sometimes, it might take us years, but you have to be in it to win it, and don’t get discouraged. I know that happens to myself and a lot of other artists: we apply for things and don’t get them. You constantly get a rejection notices, but you have to see beyond that.”

Stanya Kahn works in film and video, drawing, painting, sculpture and installation, sound, and writing. Using humor as a central device, Kahn often blurs the lines between the fictional and the real to show how language is forged out of collective experiences.

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Featuring Megan Fox Kelly, Founder of Megan Fox Kelly Art Advisory; Susanne Vielmetter, Owner and Director of Vielmetter Los Angeles; and Alain Servais, Collector and Founder of Servais Family Collection—moderated by Eileen Kinsella, Senior Market Editor of Artnet News.

Tectonic shifts are being felt across the art market. From the expansion of digital mediums and the movement towards ultra-contemporary art, to new generations of buyers and the ascent of mega-galleries, the arts landscape is undoubtedly undergoing rapid and monumental change. This panel will discuss the future of the art market in broad strokes, considering key forces behind these major movements.

Click link below to listen on Spotify

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Congratulations to Robert Pruitt who was honored on September 13th by the U.S Department of State’s Office of Art in Embassies with the 2023 U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts. The medal was presented by First Lady Dr. Jill Biden at a White House ceremony.

The Medal of Arts award was created by Art in Embassies, in partnership with the Secretary of State, in 2012 to formally acknowledge artists who have played an exemplary role in advancing the U.S. Department of State’s mission to promote cultural diplomacy. Their achievements represent those of thousands of artists who make art diplomacy possible at U.S. embassies around the world. Art serves as a bridge with other nations, encourages discussion and expression, and highlights the communal experience of people from countries, cultures, and backgrounds worldwide.

“This year’s honorees, like those before them, selflessly offer their creative talents to the mission of American cultural diplomacy,” said Megan Beyer, Director of Art in Embassies. “Artworks on display in embassies and residences are potent soft power tools of diplomacy.”

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Vielmetter Los Angeles is deeply saddened to share the news that visual artist and music pioneer Steve Roden passed away on September 6, 2023. Known for his work in painting, sculpture, sound, and video, he created a visionary and idiosyncratic aesthetic language across multiple mediums that was rooted in his interest in translating systems. Roden made connections and meaning by experimenting with visual imagery, music, language, code, translation, listening, and the amassing of various collections of objects and ephemera. Taking a particular interest in the relationship between color and sound, he focused specifically on spectrums of noise which are used to determine frequencies in sound as they relate to color. Roden then transformed this into profoundly beautiful and intellectual visual experiences. His first exhibition at Vielmetter was in 2003, followed by eight other remarkable solo exhibitions over the past eighteen years. The gallery is currently planning to present a survey of Roden’s work in the near future.

Susanne Vielmetter notes that the gallery “has lost a dear friend, a compassionate mentor, and one of the sweetest and humblest artists I have ever worked with. Steve’s kindness and his thoughtfulness were a source of inspiration for all of us.”

Roden attended two of Los Angeles’s premier art schools, Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design where he received his BA in 1986, and Art Center College of Design where he received his MA in 1989. He studied with such influential artists as Mike Kelley, Stephen Prina, Gary Panter, and Emerson Woelffer. Since 1986, Roden consistently exhibited and performed his work across the United States and internationally. His artwork is held in many public and private collections including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and San Diego, and National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, Greece.

The artist is survived by his wife Sari Takahashi Roden, his mother Susan Roden, and a loving community of friends, artists, and extended family.

A celebration of Steve Roden’s life will be announced at a later date.

“I want to make sure I do things where I’m showing a commitment.”

American artist Pope.L. has crawled through Times Square in a suit, eaten the Wall Street Journal, and painted onions in the colours of the American flag. Meet the artists who, in his own words, “make stuff.”

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Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates Rodney McMillian on the acquisition of two of his works by the Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina.

Untitled (For Dr. Reagan McDonald-Mosley), 2021 and Twice Painted IV, 2022 are currently on display in the CMA’s collection gallery where they will remain on view through October. The CMA is the first museum in the Carolinas to acquire McMillian’s work. On the occasion of the acquisition McMillian was honored and presented with a key to the city.

“McMillian is one of the most thoughtful and engaging American artists working today. The paintings acquired by the CMA — one representational and one abstract — exemplify McMillian’s artistic range and the intricacy of his subject matter.” –  said Della Watkins, CMA executive director.

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Vielmetter Los Angeles is thrilled to announce the acquisition of Pope.L’s seminal work entitled “Trinket” by the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.

A monumental work consisting of a 53.5’ long American Flag, “Trinket” was first presented at MOCA in 2015. During the museum’s public hours the flag was blown continuously by four industrial-grade fans creating a powerful air stream within the museum’s architecture which caused the fabric of the flag to fray and disintegrate over the course of the exhibition. The powerful image of the successively unraveling stripes of the flag, wildly gesturing like the arms of an unpredictable hydra, became a potent metaphor for the peril and disintegration of democracy, as much at the time when the work was first conceived during a time of war in 2008, as when it was presented at MOCA in a solo exhibition curated by Bennett Simpson in 2015. Timely and relevant to our current moment, the work is a powerful and urgent metaphor for our active engagement in the democratic process.

“This project is a chance for people to feel the flag,” Pope.L has said. “People need to feel their democracy, not just hear words about it. For me, democracy is active, not passive. With Trinket, I am showing something that’s always been true. The American flag is not a toy. It’s not tame. It’s bright, loud, bristling and alive.”

Vielmetter Los Angeles is thrilled to announce the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles’ acquisition of several works by My Barbarian!

The acquisition includes a video installation and three sculptural works which were included in the collective’s 2022 survey exhibition that debuted at The Whitney Museum of American Art in 2022 and subsequently traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.

Vielmetter Los Angeles is excited to announce the acquisition of several works of My Barbarian by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art!

The acquisition includes the collective’s episodic video “Double Agency,” a multimedia work comprised of four episodes, originally commissioned for the museum’s fiftieth anniversary and accompanying series of masks from the “Masks of the World” series which are forgeries from LACMA’s collection.

“In a way the “Double Agency” project, from webisodes to masks to live performance, is all television. The title becomes both a pseudonym for My Barbarian and a description of how we work among fields of cultural production. As black-box theatricalists who snuck into the white cube, we are double agents, serving our own idiosyncratic interests even as we collaborate with institutions to serve the “public,” a designation rife with contradictions in the museum context, one which we have designs on exceeding.” – My Barbarian

It is with great excitement that Vielmetter Los Angeles welcomes Rebecca McGrew as Senior Director of Institutional Relations to the gallery.

“We are thrilled to welcome Rebecca to our team” said Susanne Vielmetter, owner. “Rebecca’s curatorial vision and her deep commitment to the artists she has worked with has long aligned with our mission at Vielmetter Los Angeles, and we look forward to our future work together.” In the role of Senior Director of Institutional Relations, Rebecca will work closely with our team and with the gallery artists to develop, nurture, and expand institutional relationships and to foster ongoing curatorial conversations with museums.

In her former position as the Senior Curator at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, Rebecca developed an exceptional exhibition program that engaged with some of the most important artists of our time, including Edgar Arceneaux, Mowry Baden, Sadie Barnette, Andrea Bowers, Mark Bradford, Christina Fernandez, Charles Gaines, Marcia Hafif, Frederick Hammersley, June Harwood, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Hayv Kahraman, Todd Gray, Naomi Rincon-Gallardo, Steve Roden, Amanda Ross-Ho, Alison Saar, Barbara T. Smith, and James Turrell, among many others. Rebecca brings with her over two decades of curatorial excellence and innovative contemporary programming, which also includes the award-winning and critically acclaimed It Happened at Pomona: Art at the Edge of Los Angeles 1969–1973 (2011– 12, co-curated with Glenn Phillips).

She is the recipient of the Fellows of Contemporary Art’s 2020 Curator’s Award (for Alison Saar: Of Aether and Earthe with Irene Georgia Tsatsos), a Getty Curatorial Research Fellowship (2007), and Getty Foundation grants under the Pacific Standard Time initiatives in 2021-24, 2014–17, and 2009–12. She has previously held curatorial positions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Center for the Study of Political Graphics. Rebecca received her B.A. from Pomona College and an M.A. in art history from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

“I am absolutely elated about joining the fantastic team at Vielmetter Los Angeles,” said McGrew. “Our artistic visions have long complemented each other, and I’m beyond excited to be working with all the outstanding artists at the gallery.”

We look forward to welcoming Rebecca on June 30, 2023!

Travellers entering or leaving the Historic Broadway station will do so via an entrance pavilion adorned with text in different colours and languages, a site-specific work by Los Angeles-based artist Andrea Bowers titled The People United (“El pueblo unido jamás será vencido,” Sergio Ortega and Quilapayun; “Brown Beret 13 Point Political Program,” La Causa) (2023). The titular phrases are frequent chants at protests, which often take place nearby as the Historic Broadway station sits near City Hall, county and federal courthouses, the headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department and other civic institutions.

“I seek to reflect the diverse communities that regularly gather downtown to express their voices and their rights,” Bowers said in a statement.

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“Using found materials and mesmerizing structures that unearth deep-rooted emotions, Wangechi Mutu’s visual creations celebrate our collective history and explore how art communicates into the future. From ancient rock carvings in the Sahel to her own chimeric abstractions, she shares her journey of self-discovery and reminds us all that we already speak the most ancient language of all.”

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Vielmetter Los Angeles is excited to announce the acquisition of Dave McKenzie’s “Listed under accessories,” 2022 by The Whitney Museum of American Art!

Dave McKenzie’s two-channel video, Listed under accessories, was included in the 2022 Whitney Biennial, Quiet as It’s Kept, curated by Adrienne Edwards and David Breslin and was acquired by the museum for the permanent collection.

The New Museum presents “Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined” running from March 2 through June 4, 2023 a major solo exhibition of the work of Wangechi Mutu.

Representing the full breadth of her practice, the presentation will encompass painting, collage, drawing, sculpture, film, and performance. Mutu first gained acclaim for her collage-based practice exploring camouflage, transformation, and mutation. She extends these strategies to her work across various media, developing hybrid, fantastical forms that fuse mythical and folkloric narratives with layered sociohistorical references. “Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined” will trace connections between recent developments in the artist’s sculptural practice and her decades-long exploration of the legacies of colonialism, globalization, and African and diasporic cultural traditions. At once culturally specific and transnational in scope, Mutu’s work grapples with contemporary realities, while proffering new models for a radically changed future informed by feminism, Afrofuturism, and interspecies symbiosis.

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Art Production Fund’s ‘Now Playing’ brings together a series of artworks that shine a light on the often-overlooked elements of everyday life in Los Angeles; the vehicles, street food, sports, aircraft, construction sites and deeper histories that blend into the background. The artists featured in ‘Now Playing’ provide a lens through which we can see these quotidian details anew; ever present but unseen, that make Los Angeles a city both complex and beloved. ‘Now Playing’ receives support from Art of Recovery, an initiative of the City of Santa Monica Cultural Affairs. Participating artists in ‘Now Playing’ include Autumn Breon, Chris Burden, Jose Dávila, Basil Kincaid, Divya Mehra, Ruben Ochoa, Alake Shilling and Jennifer West.

Ruben Ochoa pays tribute to the street vendor community, connecting his personal narrative to his art making.

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At Frieze Los Angeles 2023, Stanya Kahn will create the newest iteration of the R.U.in.ART Commission: an annual initiative that invites a Californian artist to realize a commission in the Ruinart lounge at Frieze Los Angeles.

Kahn’s commission, titled Understory, takes the form of an installation in which elements of the natural world frame paintings and sculptures depicting lone animals in imagined wilds. Drawing on her 2022 exhibition at Vielmetter Los Angeles, Forest for the Trees, the installation references forms of life that dwell between the forest floor and the canopy.

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